


i will not speak of your sin

by silver_atalanta



Category: Trigun
Genre: Gen, bromance kind of, moral conflict, they are so messed up arent they, what is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:17:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_atalanta/pseuds/silver_atalanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing around but sand and miles and sand. You must understand that in this place there is this--this gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will not speak of your sin

He takes a drag from his cigarette and tastes the familiar flashes of nicotine and ashes on his tongue. The suns are hot and burning down and in his suit familiar sweat starts to form. Next to him his companion has gone silent, all the usual childish actions that cover his true self dismantling under the waves of heat and the priest’s stoic silence.  
Nothing around but sand and miles and sand. 

He breaks the silence, pulling the cigarette from his mouth to puff smoke into the scorching air. “Being what you are, do you have any type of religion?”

Beside him Vash the Stampede shifts, restless and patient all at once and every other conundrum known to man. But then, he knows that Vash is more than a man now. “Religion? Well, sure, I mean I know all about Christianity…I learned about it on the Seed ship. From Rem.”

Of course from Rem; everything is from Rem, dearly deceased and wicked in her naivety, perhaps, for all she has done to this creature standing beside him. For bringing them to this desert wasteland in the goddamn first place. 

“What do you think of it? Do you believe in a God?” He doesn’t know why he is asking this; why now. He just knows that lately religion, a thing that should always be on a priest’s mind, is just now starting to take up some space inside of his mind. He thinks that perhaps it’s because of the being standing next to him, but he thinks he knows better; his bones are tired and his eyes are weary and he knows instinctively that his time is almost up here, on his planet. 

“God? I suppose I do… I never really thought much about it, Wolfwood. Why are you asking me this?”

“Do you believe in the Devil? Do you believe in Eden?”

“Where’s all this coming from? I mean, I think that if I were…not what I am then I might believe a little bit more…”

The cigarette is almost out, a pile of ashes at his feet. “But you’re immortal, so thoughts about religion have never had reason to cross your mind. You’re unending.”

“I do have an ending. I am not immortal Wolfwood; I can die.” In the Stampede’s voice there is something distinctly flat, distinctly hidden. But Wolfwood already knows what Vash is thinking, having met the future demise of Vash only a few days earlier. Immortals can only be destroyed by immortals, just as humans destroy one another. 

And it is all just a matter of time. 

“Anything can die, I suppose, some sooner than others, right?” he confesses, letting the used up cigarette fall from his mouth. It crumples to the sand and gets buried almost immediately. “I don’t really think I’m a priest. Or at least not a good one.”

“You kill. I don’t think that’s priestly behavior.”

“Maybe not. But who knows? The people I kill I normally bad so that has to count for something, right? By killing someone bad I might have saved another life and that’s what priests are supposed to do—save.”

“At what cost though?” the Stampede whispers, a light wispy sound. “To save by killing? What about the people you kill—shouldn’t you be saving them too?”

“Maybe they all went to heaven. I’d like to think that they do. I mean, if a rapist and a murderer can be sent to heaven, why can’t a man like me? A wayward priest?”

“You have no right to—“

“—take a person’s life. I know. And sometimes, Vash, I really do regret killing a person, taking a life. But if I had not killed them, someone else would have, or they would have just died eventually anyway. That’s the thing about us humans, Mr. Immortal—we die, one way or other. I just give people a way to die, you see?”

“No, I don’t. You’re just reasoning with yourself. You’re just trying to make yourself feel better about what you’ve done.”

Suddenly he is irrevocably angry, turning a little to look at his companion. Vash the stampede is so goddamn calm and collected standing there next to him then, looking at him with those big, soulful aqua eyes that show infinity, that show death. And he, this hollow priest, wants to hit him, wants to shoot him and end him like he’s done to so many others, most deserving, deserving. 

But none so deserving, he realizes, as the creature that stands beside him. 

“What I’ve done means little in the face of what you have done, my friend,” he says into the wasteland desert between them, the words petty maybe, more hurtful than they should be but he doesn’t care. He just wants to make this immortal being hurt suddenly as much as he, the mortal, does. “All the deaths you have caused—more than me, surely.”

“The deaths I have caused I regret deeply, Wolfwood,” the blonde death bringer says easily, even though his voice is dark with pain. “And I never meant for any of them to happen. Circumstances just made it happen. I tried to stop it. I tried…I try to be good.”

“Try to be good, huh? That’s a hard feat to accomplish, Vash the Stampede, considering who you are and where we exist. I wish you luck on that futile quest though; goodness is not an easy thing to obtain. Take it from a priest.”

He takes a step forward into the shifting sands, the burning horizon. Tastes ash and sand and death on his tongue and in his body as he starts to walk, hefting the cross that harbors death on his back—his burden, his sin, his saving grace. Vash the Stampede, that Humanoid Typhoon, watches him leave with eyes hidden by glasses, just like his own. 

“Not that any of it matters anymore,” he calls back, through the howling wind, knows the plant can hear him. “Religion, Eden, God—none of it matters. Just pick up a gun and see where it takes you. Follow the gunshots—that’s the true doctrine of this place, isn’t it?”

There is no reply; he was not expecting one, anyway.

He tastes only ashes now.

\---  
I have no idea what this is but...Here ya go! Sorry if it's weird but it's just kind of my rambling thoughts on these two because this conflicting views on everything intrigue me a lot. But thank you for reading! :)


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